Episode Two: Pulse of Unleashed Stories

July 28, 2024

Maura Conlon  00:06

Welcome, I’m putting on the tea, just like my grandmother did in County Clare Ireland more than a century ago.

Maura Conlon  00:21

You’re listening to Original Belonging. I am your host Maura Conlon, born and raised in Los Angeles. I’m passionate about the primal nature of our creativity, which allows us to reconnect with ourselves and with a sacred web of life. I hold a doctorate in depth psychology, and I’m the author of FBI Girl, a best selling memoir about my first 14 years a coming of age saga also adapted for stage, whether unfolding upon the page or the stage of your childhood playground. We all have life defining moments from our first 14 years. Stories that often get buried in our adult lives. Yet, these early visceral sometimes mystical experiences remain a treasure trove incubating our original wisdom. When remembered, the stories offered timeless inspiration, and resilience through thread, or our lives. 

Maura Conlon  01:46

Original Belonging is a six part narrative podcast series featuring stories and conversations, where we return to and explore the vital landscape of our early years. In each episode, I go back in time to share my story, a hologram if you like depicting the agony and the ecstasy, and the wisdom learned and these poignant coming of age years. Let’s not dismiss the places that made us come alive when we were young. They hold a key as to how we can open our hearts and evolve into our truest potential. Such primal memories are not long ago and far away. No, they live inside of you. They’re right here. Listen, close.

Maura Conlon  02:49

Episode Two. Pulse of unleashed stories. Today on the episode, you will hear about how I reconnected with the loss stories of my ancestors and claimed what was almost forgotten. You will also hear me in conversation with social impact leader and Global Women’s silence breaker Jensine Larsen, founder and CEO of World Pulse,

Jensine Larsen  03:17

if I can be a vessel, to listen and be a conduit to carry these stories that are buried in these pockets of the world that are not getting out if I can do that if I can write these stories, and that would be my greatest goal and purpose.

Maura Conlon  03:39

Growing up 6000 miles away from the homeland of my ancestors, I felt a curious sense of exile, a nine presence of loss. I was Irish, but I knew nothing about Ireland. And we lived near Los Angeles where stories of immigrant history seem to be irrelevant within the bustling American dream of moving ahead.

Maura Conlon  04:21

Growing up with this name, Maura, which is Irish for Mary. It was a very odd name to have in Southern California. So I basically spent a good deal of my childhood explaining the derivation of my name to people. My grandmother in New York would come out to visit us or I would visit her in New York. And I would ask her, Grandma, what was it like to grow up on a farm and come to New York, and she really got tired of me pestering her and finally one day she said he had never asked me another question about that forsaken country again. Do you hear me and So there was real resistance to my curiosity. 

Maura Conlon  05:04

So if you tell a kid don’t do something, well, what’s a kid going to do? So my curiosity was piqued really early on. My grandmother gave me a book when I was quite young. It was a picture book. This is Ireland with beautiful chalet leaves, and you know, double decker buses and shamrocks and fairies and rainbows. On one hand, I was being given these little crumbs to follow. Yes, that’s really good to be curious about your ancestral connection. But on the other hand, the silence and the resistance. She came to New York when she was 18 years old. And she, I knew that she became a seamstress in New York City, and she supported the family while my grandfather was out of work. To me, she was like this mighty icon, supporting the family.

Maura Conlon  06:07

This woman who came from Ireland, who refused to talk about her homeland, was also creating the future for my father. And then, of course, my father gave me this Irish name. Almost as if I was being asked to go into the silenced family history that nobody could talk about. It was almost as if I was given that assignment. I sometimes feel that way. With regards to having this, this Irish name. One of the exotic objects in our house was when the mail arrived, and a letter would come from Ireland, from my great aunt, my grandmother’s youngest sister who still was on the family farm in County, Clare. And back then, there were these little paper, thin blue arrow mail envelopes that seemed to take six weeks across the Atlantic, you know, to arrive to our house. And it was like out of a Hollywood movie to have this letter from Ireland arrive. There was just the sense of enchantment, here, and my great aunt talked about the rain and the various kinds of rain, and it was a very different world she was describing. So early on, I knew that someday I’m going to meet her. Someday I’m going to go to the farm, where my grandmother was born and raised and show up.

Maura Conlon  07:38

So I always had this sense that home was perhaps not just one place. California post World War Two suburban boom, lots of activities going on. Well, you know, there’s a rollout of these suburban neighborhoods, and the houses all look similar. And there there was no talk of history or culture or no particular music really around is Hollywood, a Disney Land and television. And just this general sense that this is this, this is life, this is the ticket to living is all this. My grandmother, who was born in Ireland coming out to visit when I was a really young age and saying something to the effect of, oh, it’s a damn desert out here. Everything was irrigated, watered, the natural landscape of where I grew up, was arid, early on, there were these little clues that are really living in a brown place, not really a green place. It was as if she was saying, this reality that you think you’re living in is not really the reality.

Maura Conlon  08:55

You are not far from Disneyland, maybe 10 miles from our house, and we would go past all these strawberry fields. And back then there were a lot of strawberry fields, and then all of a sudden there would be this matter horn covered with snow. So there was a sense of there’s another kingdom over there. It’s called Disneyland, it’s 11 miles from our house with the brown soil all around it. What’s the real place here? Where do I belong?

Maura Conlon  09:32

So there was just a lot of mystery, you know, being surrounded by these nuns at school who who had the accents and the priests and my parents friends were often Irish. It was just like a subculture that I was seeped in, in Southern California, which felt so different than the cultural edifices of Hollywood. So there were like these two layers of popular culture and then something deeper something deeper about belonging. Like I know it did not belong to Disney Land, but I knew I belonged to Ireland. We come from an ancestry We come from a line of people and and oftentimes that, that ancestry is distributed, distributed through time and space. Human beings are hardwired for connection to the place that they’re living in that place are all the stories is the music is the tradition. This is a part of our indigenous nature that we all have. So I thought it was kind of odd that I had this fascination with my indigeneity. It was not an intellectual journey, it was not a conceptual pursuit. 

Maura Conlon  10:48

It was just, I was calling the tree in the backyard, my leprechaun tree. So I think this also speaks to a silence. Because as kids, we want to hear the stories. We want to hear who our people were, what did they do? What what did they do for a living? What was life like on the farms? What songs do they sing? What kinds of clothes did they wear? Where did they have for breakfast? I think this is just like a natural curiosity from our own family background to see how we fit in. Because we know that we’re just not individual units. We’re part of mycelium network of inner connection that goes back generations. And that’s rich material. And it’s not fairy tales, there’s there’s trauma, there’s loss, there’s there’s genocide. There’s so many stories that we never get to hear.

Maura Conlon  12:07

Where the world is right now, what’s happening to the planet and my heartaches, because I think of my ancestors who took those horrible immigrant ships across the Atlantic Ocean, in my case, landing in Ellis Island in New York City, and what they left behind

Maura Conlon  12:30

Knowing that they would never go back to their native homeland again. And then for them to be alive today and see what’s happening to the earth. I mean, what’s it all for? Going back and feeling into their stories, partly, there’s an honoring, of the stories we never got to hear. There’s a sense of connecting into their strength and resilience, that they had a dream that carried them forward. Even if that was just survival, but to make life better, somehow. There’s something mythical about this, that perhaps something about the spiritual nature of our ancestors is still alive and humming in our cells. And what gets handed down in a really embodied kind of way.

Maura Conlon  13:40

I recall being pretty young and walking around my neighborhood, and all of a sudden, I just started reciting poetry. It just came out. I could feel it jumping from my tongue. I mean, it was so visceral. I had to turn around and say, What’s going on here? What where does this voice coming from this poetry, the way my tongue gets shaped the way it does to say the words that come out of my mouth with a little bit of a little to them. And at that time, 1314 is when I realized that I had a real interest in writing, and poetry. And I had a sense that there was a connection between my becoming a poet at an early age and that been related to Ireland somehow.

Maura Conlon  14:36

I just had this instinctive sense that the way I looked at the world was maybe even Irish. Noticing light and color, I would sit in my classroom and my head was always turned to the left and noticing the wind and there was a real sensorial connection. One. Oh, you know, it’s voice and body and wind and ancestral spirits moving through us at all times. And we just don’t see it. But I think there’s real power in looking at ourselves in the mirror to see that soul deep within. We’re just a piece of that larger puzzle, trying to find our way home.

Maura Conlon  15:37

My parents, they grew up during the Great Depression, my father served in the World War Two. And they married and moved to California and raised five kids. And that was what they were focused on. And my generation, I think, we became curious, knowing that there was, we had relatives in our ancestral homeland. My parents got me the Irish sweater, and you know, the special suitcase, and I was the ambassador to make that long lost connection between the exiled tribe, and that I had a story to tell. And that’s what I wanted to find out. So I had the opportunity to go in my late teens, to Ireland with an uncle who was a progressive Catholic priest, and he led marriage and counter workshops around the world actually. And so I flew to Ireland with him in December of 1979.

Maura Conlon  16:50

In leaving California to fly to Ireland back then, I was not leaving California forever. But in a way I kind of was. And when I went to Ireland, I was flooded with gorgeousness, that damn desert called Southern California was nowhere to be found. There were these rolling hills of green and the gray clouds hovering low and the mist and the smell of peat in the air and cars that were a little bit older than the ones that we drove in California. And there was this way of speech that was so beautiful. And growing up in such a quiet family as I did. And to hear the Irish speak with one another. It was as if they were singing 

Maura Conlon  17:50

My great aunt, by visited on the family farm, as soon as she saw me, opened the door and saw me she said, Welcome home. I was stunned. Such a resemblance to my father’s same mannerisms, same eyes, it was very, very chilling to see this physical connection. Then I realized that I was the missing piece of the puzzle that she had been waiting to meet. All those decades of writing those letters to our house in Southern California. And there I was on her doorstep. On the farm where my grandmother was born, where my family has lived for hundreds of years. It was like a chill went through my body. And I thought, Oh, that’s right. I am home. Like I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know, I wasn’t home until I felt this is home. I’m from here. I don’t have to explain my name to anybody. But I just felt it in my body. Being on the farm, seeing the cows smelling the hay. I had never been on a farm in my life. And it felt so completely natural to me.

Maura Conlon  19:05

So she led us into her humble house, which she shared with her extended family. And I sat in a room that was lit by a peat fire. So that smell the peat smoke. And I think there were pink walls and she left the room and came back with a tray of hot tea and sandwiches and said something to the effect of I would have cooked a goose if I had more notice. And then I looked above the fireplace, and there was a photograph and I couldn’t believe what I saw. But it was a photograph of my father at age 10 sitting with my Irish born grandmother and of course this would have been taken in New York in the 1930s and I asked my grade Dan, how long has that photograph been up there? Well, you know, we knows when whenever Molly sent it to me, which was probably 50 years before that time. So there was a sense of being 6000 miles away from the place where I was from. And then meeting my great aunt who had such a resemblance to my father’s same mannerisms, same eyes, it was very, very chilling to see this physical connection.

Maura Conlon  20:39

So I was in Ireland with my uncle, and he was there to do one of his Marriage Encounter workshops. So I had a lot of freedom and time to roam around. And I met several the young people around town and one of them invited me to her home. And I recall sitting in her living room and looking through the lace curtains to her backyard, and seeing a yard full of tombstones. So I asked, Why is your backyard full of tombstones, and she said, Well, that’s what my father does for a living. A woman that that we were staying with that she was off one afternoon, I think to help and bomb somebody who had recently passed away. So it you know, it was like, introduction not only to my homeland, but to this, this natural process of life and death, which we didn’t really talk about in my, my home. And then, one evening, we were invited to go do pub, which was the social gathering place. And I walked in the doors and there was the sound of Irish musicians. In the corner, planed reels of this amazing music that just created sparks in the air. I had never heard anything like this in my entire life, live music that felt all of the story and depth and passion.

Maura Conlon  22:30

And then when the music stopped, a man stood up in the middle of the pub and started to sing a ballad. And everybody stopped. It was just pure silence, to listen to his words. I had never seen anything like this before that somebody would just stand up inside of a pub and start singing. You know this real like communicating this feeling that it seemed everybody could tap into. In other words, it wasn’t just him performing. Like he was speaking the emotion of the people around him

Maura Conlon  23:16

sort of singing our collective emotion is what it felt like. So this is an oral storytelling culture. And this is what happens in cultures like that. It can bring tears to your eyes, because it feels so real.

Singing  23:37

America Ron is John Larkin faced him to the stony swallow remind to roll. There was blood for bloodied have ribbon John never face. That very day he went to town with a pistol and

Maura Conlon  23:59

so I brought my journal with me to Ireland and at night I would come back into my room and sit next to the peat fire and have a cup of tea and I would write and this is something I wrote on that first trip to Ireland. Whatever you love in life, always be at peace with yourself as to pursue that freedom and feel that love. Do not let the ways of the world rob you of your sight to see your heart to feel. Always notice the sky in her belongings. Always notice the water and her reflections. This way you see almost everything. Finally see into yourself and find the mirror of your people. Express cry, be hurt. Find a rainbow and laugh. Run naked and scream, what am I, and accept the wrinkles of age, as a new world of energy tapped, my wish for you are tears for when tears come, night is over, and day, sunlight, new life as begun.

Maura Conlon  25:20

So I wrote that as a teenager, and inspired by all that I was experiencing in the sense of really being at home. There’s a feeling that there’s a fabric, and it consists of people, and land, and animals, and the weather, and the stars and the ocean, like, it’s one piece. We’re all in this together. And American culture, we’re not really taught to ask each other questions about, Oh, where did your people come from? Or what did they do? What did you learn from them? What stories got passed down, we have a deep hunger to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of belonging that goes to the core of who we are a steering of something deeper, grasping for something that’s unchanged, that’s unsullied, that’s prior to a cynical nature setting in now is the time when openings are continuing to happen, where we are speaking from the deepest soul level, about what is really important at this time. 

Maura Conlon  26:53

There is a call there is a need for women to speak to the care of the earth, in every way we live in our art in what we do at work, in our conversations like to really own that authority. That this is what’s important. Now, this is soul conversation. And it’s so connected to our ancestors, because if we really honor what they gave to us, even if we don’t know their story, we still have the power and we have the authority to speak into that void and to bring in the richness of our voice.

Maura Conlon  27:39

My grandmother’s intergenerational silence of exile has been transmuted into this story of connection, a story of caring for for ancestors and for the larger family of which I and all of us are part. We each have our ancestry story. What is yours?

Maura Conlon  28:12

Stories are connective tissue that make us feel less alone. As a young girl, I can remember my mother and her women friends sitting in our living room, sharing stories. That energy felt like a lifeline. We find personal agency when our stories are heard. This is the beginning of powerful change. Social Impact leader and Global Women’s silence breaker Jensine Larsen is the founder and CEO of World Pulse, a global digital platform connecting women’s voices and stories in every country on Earth. As a young international journalist working in the Amazon, she met with local women whose wisdom she recognized could solve the devastating challenges if only their voices could be heard. Her visionary leadership is rooted in a childhood filled with nature, books, and sparks of an unflinching imagination.

Jensine Larsen  29:34

I grew up in the rural countryside. In Wisconsin, it’s actually called a unglaciated area where the glaciers didn’t come so it has all these ancient old rolling hills. And I could find the Indian arrowheads around the land. old farmhouse, old barn, crumbling barn. Lots of animals go pigs, chickens. My parents were back to the land. folks coming from the universities of Wisconsin and the protests of the Vietnam War, my mother wanted to garden with a passion. So they coming out of the city, they found this plot of land and had me as their first child, just a year moving there, this beautiful patch of the world, next to a stream with a family that also was struggling a lot with poverty and making it farm work and not have to do it. 

Maura Conlon  30:44

The big exposure, I mean, to the natural elements and to like you say the history of your parents coming from the cities to live this ideal life, and basically those real challenges. I’m curious, where was your sweet spot when you were a kid in that environment? Oh,

Jensine Larsen  31:03

yeah, that was my world was running outside hearing the stream doors land behind, and then getting out to the streams with my sticks and fishing for leaves and making the trees into tree houses with all my toys, and my little toy telephones into the trunks of the trees for communication across the trees, the imaginary cities and I had a fairies. I know, I played a lot with fairies, I had two little brothers who I tried not to hang out with very much. And it was a lot of my own time. So I would bring stacks of books up to the fields behind the barn and lay out a blanket. And that was my world to read, to dream to imagine. 

Jensine Larsen  31:53

And where my love of learning about the diversity of the world came to me through these very solitary moments. Creativity was everywhere outside. But I remember stepping outside on cool summer nights, just in my night gown, just to go out to the warm road, the country road and dance with my bare feet to feel the warmth of the country road under my bare feet and just be my own dancer ballerina to the sound of the whip or we’ll never forget, like I just felt so free, so creative, so alive in those moments, and nobody was there. So I felt blessed. It was the richness, I could have lived in a castle for everything I had in the natural world.

Maura Conlon  32:47

Oh, I feel like you’ve just transported us there right now. So what I’m really hearing is that amazing, delectable fusion of this connection to nature and feeling so at one with the world there. And then this sense of imagination that was budding out of that with the dance scene, and I’m curious, was that like your secret world? Did you bring that sort of back into your family life? Or was that just like your own private universe? Did you bring that into the schools so curious, like how that was your own space versus you bringing it to other settings that you were in as a as a young person?

Jensine Larsen  33:32

I definitely what a great question. I did bring it in to certain aspects of my life. And then in other spaces, as I grew older, it started to die. And so I especially in the school system, but before that before going to school, because my parents homeschooled me until fifth grade. So that allowed this extended period of more of that incubation of me, solitary life, they didn’t really teach me much they just gave me a bunch of books. So I read a lot and I was highly advanced from the reading side. And I wove that in with this love of dress up and dancing in theater. So I bring that into like I dressed up my brothers I dressed up the baby goats. 

Jensine Larsen  34:26

I did all kinds of plays and shows for the family. I got out the swing set and had a sprinkler and did tried to do like dance routines which never put a sprinkler on a swings a metal swing set, just FYI. And so I did I was like overflowing and then as I grew older that became I became like the world’s greatest babysitter. I love little girls were my specialty. So I was booked for months with all the families around the town and I had my big bag of dress up clothes Because I had taken them all from my youth and just stuffed them into a bag for the kids I was babysitting for and it was always dress up, dress up, dress up non stop. So I kind of extended that. You

Maura Conlon  35:14

were creating little spaces for young girls to be transported into their magical self. Yeah,

Jensine Larsen  35:21

yeah. And me too. And by extension as I was older, so yeah,

Maura Conlon  35:26

you have this reputation out there in the world, for being a global women’s silence breaker. And I’m seeing this young young Cena dancing with the costumes and with nature. And I’m curious, was there a sense of of silence that you were aware of in your own life back then,

Jensine Larsen  35:47

your life journey is growing up against that thing that is your life’s greatest challenge your life’s greatest work. And for me, it has been this process of uncovering my voice. But in retrospect, and also talking to you, of course, the voice was always there. But it got papered over, it got stuffed down, it got squelched. And that’s when I think about my life purpose of being a silence breaker, it’s breaking through that the walls, the barriers, that we squelch our own selves, to unlock that treasure, that truth of who we really are our own voice and creativity. And for me, there were layers of papering over of stopping up that voice. And in the home, yes, it was happening. I mean, my parents would argue all the time and fighting about money, and it was really just go and close the door. And, you know, not try to be out shouting in that and just kind of going into myself to protect my own self in that I was sexually abused by an uncle. But it’s unconscious memory, I don’t actually remember it very well, quite young, maybe three or four. 

Jensine Larsen  37:09

But you never know how the unconscious works on your body and yourself. But for me, the real pain came going into the school system. And I don’t know if it’s because my parents held me back for so long being dropped into the school system was like an alien dropping spaceship, into this world where everything’s so structured and the way knowledge was supposed to be through memorization and the math tables and all the social bonds that were already there. And my father decided put me in for half days to make it worse, so was not like I could pretend I just moved there. And then just absorb into the system. It was like, just the mornings, or just the afternoons, actually, just here I am, you know, for half the day. And so there was bullying. 

Jensine Larsen  37:09

There was just doubt of my own self and my own sense of knowledge. And I became paralyzing ly shy, and I became paralyzing ly shy, all the way up through the end of high school, where I started to have some transformations, but it was like, walking around in a sea of people. But just literally feeling like brick wall around your inside, like your voice is burning inside, you know, you have so much but if you say something now, everybody’s gonna look because you never say anything. So it better be the most profound thing you’ve ever said in your life. And, and so I just, you know, went out on the school grounds, and I swung by myself and I just I got into the space of being the quiet one. And that’s how it was for years. It was painful.

Maura Conlon  39:01

I just want to honor everything you just shared. It’s just the challenges and the pain and the violations to honor your inner fierceness.

Jensine Larsen  39:13

Thank you. Yeah. Hi, when I go back to her and be gentle to her, I couldn’t even correct people who mispronounce my name. And you know, that happened. Like my whole school. It wasn’t until maybe I was 16 or 17. I was like, you know, you guys my name is actually yen Cena was like, what? It was hard for me to raise my hand to go to the bathroom. You

Maura Conlon  39:35

and I would have been best friends in elementary school because my story is exactly the same. I was voted most shy girl in eighth grade. And you know, I think it’s girls young girls like us. There’s like a volcano inside. Yeah, no one’s asking. Is there a volcano inside of you by chance? But there is

Jensine Larsen  39:54

there absolutely is any multiply us times 3 billion In and around the world, this untapped volcano, and we’re seeing it, we’re certainly seeing it, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Yes.

Maura Conlon  40:11

And I think a lot of people can relate, you know, I think a lot of people have these versions of challenges, assaults to our imaginations and beyond. So that amazing transition that happened for you, going from this, this shy, quiet, yet, knowing this inner world of fierceness existed within you, what was the transition to first seeds of what would become this amazing global digital platform called World pulse.

Jensine Larsen  40:43

The transition started to happen, my junior year of high school, many breakthroughs happened in that time of my life. But it started with falling in love with a friend, another woman, who was a year older than me, and just finding someone who really saw me and I could play with and just so much joy and feelings like that young adolescent love that comes. But also very innocent, great friends. But we were, we were in love. I love notes, one of my love notes got intercepted, and got passed through the whole school, and then got passed into the town by the parents. And the teachers and my little brothers were getting bullied in elementary school. And so there’s something inside of me that just like literally erupted where I joined the school newspaper, and I wrote these articles, I just started writing about homophobia, and, and then the Iraq war was happening the same time. 

Jensine Larsen  41:51

So I started writing about the Iraq War. And then I started tackling animal testing that was happening in the school. It was, yeah, the volcano just started pouring out of me and getting that recognition from the school newspaper, the English teachers who were really there for me and my budding voice. And that was a time where it just all came out, I would actually shout back to this, the people that were heckling us in the hallway, like get a life, you know, like, I always felt so protective of her. And over it, I need to get out of this town, I’m done.

Maura Conlon  42:29

That force it takes for a rocket to go up into space, that kind of energy that is incredible. Was there a particular teacher that was helpful or a guide?

Jensine Larsen  42:40

There were two English teachers who shaped my life at that time, and helped me with the transition into just this roar. Both of them have passed on actually, so I’ve been thinking about them a lot. The other thing that happened at this time was the very last year of school, I tried out for the school play. And this woman I’d fell in love with was an actress. And she was like, I did her makeup in the school play because I always was behind the scenes, you know, doing the things to support the theater. And I could never try out I would always go to the door with my little playbook having practice, practice, practice. And I couldn’t go into the tryout so I did this year after year, I just couldn’t even try out. 

Jensine Larsen  43:26

So after this experience with her, our relationship, unfortunately didn’t make it because her family was very religious, and they forbid us and our relationship was destroyed. But I took that energy and I decided to try out for the school play the very last spring opportunity to do that and do improv, which was terrifying. I mean, all that shyness was still there. I can’t believe I did it. But I ended up getting the lead that final year. It was a Tennessee Williams play. It was an adaptation. It was called all the way home. And I’ll never forget, I got to speak in a southern accent and slap people and kiss people and be a mother and like all the things of the range of like life I could play on stage and and I’ll just never forget opening night getting the roses and feeling like my life is complete. Like I really could die now. And I’ve fulfilled like this great dream.

Maura Conlon  44:23

And did you feel like oh my god, this is the real meat coming out. This is this is the end Cena does

Jensine Larsen  44:30

this creative spectrum, that with the writing and this activism and fierceness that I felt to make the world a better place that was all me coming into me. So

Maura Conlon  44:42

inspiring. The how the story unfolds. At those moments. I’ve just so much under the surface and bubbling and then this, the expression through writing and actually sharing your voice. So from high school. I mean, you’ve lived the life as you said so But what else was there to do for you?

Jensine Larsen  45:03

Everything I had been studying for my SATs since I was 15 to get out of the small town and, and I knew I wanted to see the world that was growing up reading the books of the African folktales, the stories of the Native American populations in our country, the Trail of Tears, reading about the Amazon, the Diary of Anne Frank, like all of the global, really difficult issues, I felt that I wanted to be out in the world and I wanted to learn, learn, learn, mostly wanted to learn from women. And I was not getting it in the newspapers, I was really fed up, I would say, so I decided I had to go to a global college and be in the world. So I did go to end up going to college. That’s how I came out here to Portland. From there, traveling internationally to the Amazon, at 19 years old. And that’s where I became an international journalist from that experience. And that set me on course, to the vision of World Pulse. 

Jensine Larsen  46:15

Meeting in the Amazon, was also one of the best times of my life. And I remember being with the indigenous communities that we were working with there in story circle, with a lot of definitely heightened awareness of all the dangers around me. I mean, there were wasps the size of helicopters, were coming at you. And there was active conflict happening in that area, because the oil companies were prospecting for oil, and these communities were trying to fight back against the encroachments. And the contamination that had happened on neighboring lands, those communities had the stories of their children dying of skin cancer in STEM cancer, because they’re waterways had been contaminated, and had very little rights in Ecuador. 

Jensine Larsen  47:13

So sitting with the women who were planning and plotting about how they were going to stop the bulldozers and they were going to stop the oil trucks, taking their clothes off to create a sense of, of surprise and shock and panic. And they were actually successful in the various strategies that they were using during the time that I was there in those years, to prevent in their lands, the oil coming, and then women’s networks, they were sharing their strategies across. I mean, it really continues to this day, what is the battle for the Amazon and we’ve seen Ecuador, for example, actually embed the rights of nature in their constitution, but then that gets overridden, etc, by the those in power at that moment of just the women saying, Please take our story. This is your duty to take this back and tell them what is happening to us.

Maura Conlon  48:15

Wow, what a transmission in terms of life purpose. And also, I mean, as you’re talking, it feels like they were really your guides and mentors, in terms of it seemed that they were really modeling that sense of roar that you were talking about earlier. Oh, yeah.

Jensine Larsen  48:33

That was pure awe. I situated myself as moving into journalism from that moment was I’m going to witness if my life, if I can be a vessel, to listen and be a conduit to carry these stories that are buried in these pockets of the world that are not getting out. If I can do that if I can write these stories, then that would be my greatest goal, and purpose. So that’s what I set out to do. And I didn’t have a formal journalism degree. I didn’t know anything about it. But I just started writing articles, pitching them getting them published in different magazines in the US. And in the national press. I went to the Burma Thai border and worked with refugees there and being published in the Thai press it just wherever I could really. But it was a conscious decision that this is my best place is listening. That was where I could be so that other voices, other voices could be heard.

Maura Conlon  49:35

We’re in the Amazon with you and hearing the roar of these women who are facing extreme challenges in their environment. And you receive this message that you need to be the conduit for their stories to come forward. So I’m curious how that transition manifested going from that point of recognition to launching what became World Pulse. 

Jensine Larsen  49:58

Yes, so the V Didn’t was given to me. And I’m very clear that it was given to me in this moment. Actually, it was on the Burma Thai border, I after the Amazon, I had gone there to capture the stories of Indigenous women in Burma who are facing also oil pipelines that were forced relocation and genocide was happening in their area. And that day, I had been so worn out and depressed. The interviews I was doing with these women who had been forcibly displaced, many of their family members had been even killed in front of them, just the worst things you could imagine. And I felt really hopeless. I went home and I was on a bamboo mat. I was laying there under the stars trying to sleep that night, tossing and turning, feeling like I can write these stories, but who really is going to listen, people don’t even know where this place is on the map? And are they going to care? What can I really do here? 

Jensine Larsen  51:04

And I just felt so interested. I mean, you could see in their eyes, when I talked to them, then they were so hopeful, they had so many solutions, they were so brilliant, everything they were sharing needed to get out to the world. So suddenly, as just looking at the stars, and they I can only describe it that they pull stab me, forming the shape of a globe, and I looked at it more I was like in between sleeping and waking. And I just knew that it was these voices unlocking. When one voice unlocked, it would cause a cascade of another. And there’s this building pulse was this beautiful blue light of pulse circling this globe. I just stared at it because it was so beautiful. And I just said, Oh, yeah. This is the solution. It’s about connected voice. And the world needs a platform where these amazing women can speak for themselves to the world in their own words and connect to each other. And I can’t be that intermediary anymore. It’s not for me to be telling their stories for them. And I need to get out of the way, but make sure this happens. 

Jensine Larsen  52:23

So that was the origin of World Pulse. But I was terrified to start it. I had no idea what that really was. And when I went back to the US, I started as a print magazine, because really web 2.0 was just barely beginning and nobody had even heard of it. So as soon as I caught wind of that the early days of Mark Zuckerberg were happening at the same time. And I said, this is everything, this powerful digital world wide web of women’s voices connected into this greater force. And so that’s been my life quest is building this global network of women telling stories for social change ever since

Maura Conlon  53:08

the universe was waiting for you to show up in that moment. You know, with a digital revolution about to happen and these women’s voices just aching to get out there. And there you were to see that. See that vision. So it all came together. Such a gift of yours to democratize the sharing of voices, rather being this top down journalist, and how that is such a unique way to look at opening space for women to share their voices. It’s how we speak with one another. And to truly listen is such a gift. So you created what became World Pulse. And I’d love to say in this moment in time that this is the 20th year anniversary of this incredible organization. I’d love if you could share about the amazingness of World Pulse.

Jensine Larsen  54:01

Yes, World Pulse is the leading global digital social network that’s connecting grassroots women’s voices from now every country of the world over 220 plus countries and territories. And it’s a unique online refuge, a safe space for any woman or underrepresented voice who has an internet connection to log on to speak for themselves, narrate their own story in their own words, and then be able to connect to global sisterhood to your own personal cheerleading squad globally to forge cross border connections and and grow your vision grow your leadership. So today, the network has our communities reported that they’ve gone on to impact over 24 point 8 million lives because of the connections and visibility they’ve gotten on World Pulse, expanding their move Men’s businesses launching new initiatives really every issue under the sun, you could imagine ending child marriage, climate justice, disability rights and justice. So it is a very sacred thing. 

Jensine Larsen  55:14

I’m always in awe of it. I don’t think there’s anywhere else like it on the internet, you can go in and it’s like a cathedral. The safety and support that’s been built through the community has built this, they have built it truly cross border. It’s like that magical moment as a journalist when you have your microphone, and you just are asking, what’s your vision? What do you want to say? And this alchemy happens, when you see a woman, maybe no one’s ever asked her that before in her life, maybe she’s never even thought about if she has a vision. And that moment, when it first comes out when she feels safe enough to really share what’s real, and what’s buried inside and lift that burden off of her shoulders. What happens is just jaw dropping, and never gets old. It’s my crack, it’s fine to action. And you can just pop in there any time and see the most vulnerable stories, the realities of women’s lives unvarnished around the globe, on any topic, and anyone who’s listening to I always welcome you if you have that burning story that’s not been told it is that plays for the first early telling of that story. If you want to get it out into the world, it’s a great place or to just connect and listen to other worlds, then your

Maura Conlon  56:42

own. women’s voices have been squelched for so long, but the power and the volcanoes of empowerment. The numbers are staggering in terms of the impact and the members and the women globally. I’m wondering if there’s like one story that comes to mind of all the amazing women that you are in contact with

Jensine Larsen  57:05

their stories that have started from one voice and two movements. And their stories that have been profound internal transformation. There’s there’s one that as moved me certainly and and there’s a woman named Samia, who it’s not her real name, actually. But it’s her alias. She had decided to kill herself one day, and she’s from Pakistan. And on that day, she found World Pulse. This is her retelling to us. But she had been taken advantage of by a man and she was now being cyber blackmailed by him. And she was in a such a difficult place because her family was incredibly fundamentalist. 

Jensine Larsen  57:51

And if they would have found out what happened to her, they would kill her. So she didn’t know where to go, she was trapped. And she thought the best way out would be to end her life. So she was sitting on a park bench, she found Whirlpool, she started scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through the stories down the rabbit hole and seeing oh my god, I’m not the only person who’s experiencing this there are women all over the world are going through both sexual abuse being blackmailed cyber violence like this, I’m, I’m not alone in this. 

Jensine Larsen  58:25

So as she tells us that moment, she decided I want to live. And she went on. A year later, she when she reached out to us, tell us the story. She had started a illegal clinic for young girls, she was supporting over 100 young women to protect themselves against cyber bullying, just within a year’s time. So it’s that’s the power we see again and again. And on average, those members who come into World Pulse who take on leadership roles in the community, we have an ecosystem of leadership roles. 

Jensine Larsen  58:25

Within six months to two years, they’re impacting a factor of 100 more in their communities, they’ll take that first seed of a vision and then because they feel so seen, and they feel so supported, having the tools having the visibility and belief that they can do it. That shift of self efficacy that we call it and it becomes a springboard often into finding their purpose or getting more visibility. We heard from sisters that yesterday, she’s won a million dollar global teacher prize and our members who are being the most influential 100 Women in the World by the BBC major peacemaking prize from the German government, being featured on CNN and that’s the this cascading ripple effect that can happen. You

Maura Conlon  59:48

know, as you speak, I just am really feeling this whole global roar. That and you really connecting to that in yourself and knowing mean, what can happen after one discovers or inner roar? To be witnessing this with so many women? It’s incredible. And I also think about the women who still have that volcano inside of them. And I think about women in the West, however we call the Western world, how can we be a part of that movement? 

Jensine Larsen  1:00:26

Well, the biggest thing that world polls has taught me and that and that I see happening in our community is, the universality of the oppression that we experience is we’re trapped in the patriarchy, wherever we are the systems that are dominated, defining our lives. And so we have absolute common purpose will make all of our lives better, and the world a better place. And for men and boys better, we can transform these systems. And yet it is women, especially in the Western world, who have especially more privilege and power and wealth, do have more power, actually, to shift those systems and the Speak Up. 

Jensine Larsen  1:01:43

But the irony is, they seem to be more timid about it, and more guilt around it, and paralysis, where what we see on world polls, the loudest voices are coming out of Africa, coming out of South Asia, which have some of the worst countries if you look at the data for women’s rights, and violence against women, they are speaking the loudest, they’re holding on to the microphone, the fiercest they are the voices that we absolutely need to be listening to and getting behind women in crisis zones in Afghanistan in Palestine, they have the knowledge of what they’re feeling the most impact and pain and how we can shift things. 

Jensine Larsen  1:01:57

But it is Western women who actually need to team up. So it’s a team sport that we’re talking about here. Resources, voice and connection, those are the top three things that we focus on at Whirlpool. So what we hear from women around the world, who are engaged in social change, they want more resources, obviously, to carry out 1.9% of funding that goes to women’s causes globally, from philanthropy from the US. And then point zero 1% actually gets to grassroots groups. And when we know this is the data showing us that every world problem will be solved faster with women at the table, and with women’s leadership. It’s a tragedy, it’s a great loss to the world. 

Jensine Larsen  1:01:57

So we need to get more resources moving, and then speaking up with our voices. And then the connection. What I’ve learned from World pulse is that it’s a dual transformation that happens. For those of us who are listening, and it’s real, what can I do, when you’re actually connecting with women, behind the headlines, forging that relationship, there’s so much love, there’s so much courage, there’s so much reciprocity in these relationships, these friendships, these connections, that you get as much back if you’re, you’re true in that relationship. So that’s where our lives become richer. Through connection, we may feel more emotion, more sadness, more horror.

Maura Conlon  1:03:27

With what’s really happening, I think that’s a huge point, I think a lot of us are afraid of feeling too much. Like we don’t know what to do with our emotion. And so we can get easily distracted by so many things. To have that direct connection with women from other parts of the world, who are roaring, who are ready for solutions. It’s a wake up call, and the emotion is so full, that that question does calm like, I want to do everything, but I can’t. What’s one thing? You know, and I think that emotion and then go into what’s one thing? How do you guide people who are listening now to hear their own internal roar? Because I have a sense it’s there in a lot of us. Oh,

Jensine Larsen  1:04:17

It is. It absolutely is. You might have to scratch through many layers to get there. But there’s two things I would say. And one is actually journaling. And maybe that’s a lost art these days. But it is that safe sanctuary for yourself where you can actually see your thoughts on paper and they start to materialize into reality. And that’s one that I recommend. The other is taking that stance of being the the witness the encouraged or the listener. Real pulse is a great ground to do that. That’s low stakes, but just incredible opportunity awaits you there. And some people, for example, just pencil off 30 minutes a month to go into World Pulse and just travel around the world looking, reading different stories leaving comments. 

Jensine Larsen  1:05:15

If you leave 10 comments, you become an encourager, you get an encourager badge. And it’s kind of that 10 Comment Mark, when you’re just listening, observing, and you start to interact with the storytellers and the authors where you might, there might be something that calls you a tug, like, Oh, I really love what she’s up to, or I really am feeling a spark with this relationship. Want to learn more, and that’s where you can choose to deepen those relationships. But it can start by this act of a positive comment, letting a woman know that she’s been heard, she may never have really experienced that before. That is catalytic. You might not be going to the soup kitchen, like I’m filling a bowl of soup and giving it to someone with my time, but your time is equally as valuable. And the end result, what you’re seeing is unlocking of voices around the world. It doesn’t take much and you feel great. It’s

Maura Conlon  1:06:12

like we connect our roar at that rhizome level, the mycelium level. And there’s a sense of instantaneous connection. Because we’re coming from this place of authenticity. I mean, that Roar is like the soul’s voice. I mean, if you want to call it that it’s pure, and powerful, and magic. I’d like to just say something when I first met you close to 20 years ago now, what really struck me was that you felt like a true visionary. And I never really had thought about that word before. Words like leader and innovator and visionary kind of get tossed around out there. But there was something about you that just shown like this woman, like she has a real vision, it’s not imaginary, or imaginal. It’s happening, it’s vibrating. I can’t say that about many people that I have met in my life. It’s really a rare quality. So just want to honor that in you and express that because I’ve always been in awe of that, given the challenges facing humanity right now. What would you say to anyone contemplating the question? How can I transform my ideas into impactful visionary change in the world?

Jensine Larsen  1:07:39

Well, another thing that World Pulse community has taught me that it actually never does happen alone, it happens in the collective. To be able to start to share your inner dreams, no matter how silly they are. Just the Inklings that you have the what if I did this? I’d say call it the what if talk what if this happened? What if this happened, sharing it with your friends sharing with your family? And what starts to happen? Is this reflection from them like Yes, oh, that would be great or go do that? Or yes, they also are your can be your champions of your book group, whatever it is, and that’s what happened for me. People like you, Maura, who when I spoke my vision said, Oh, my God, this could really happen where I was like, yeah, actually, this could really happen and teaming up with all the people to make it a reality. Our voices are born in the collective.

Maura Conlon  1:08:50

That was social impact leader and Global Women’s silence breaker Jensine Larson, founder and CEO of World Pulse. She is also a keynote speaker.

Maura Conlon  1:09:16

Thank you so much for listening to Original Belonging. I’m your host, Maura Conlon. Please subscribe rate and recommend with love wherever you listen to podcasts. And to find out more about each episode, please delve into the show notes. To learn more about how you can engage with the world of stories within you. Please find me online at originalbelonging.com and on Instagram @originalbelonging. This production was co created by award winning media midwife, Ahri Golden. You can find a link to her work in the show notes and on her website, ahrigolden.com That’s ahrigoldn.com. 

Maura Conlon 1:10:27

Join us next time as Original Belonging continues.